Over the years I have marveled at how Pathwork attracts seekers from a diverse group of cultures, spiritual backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews. As an international community we are truly a melting pot that expresses both our individuality and our common humanity. Our stories weave us together like threads in a magnificent tapestry, and speak to the core longing we all share as we navigate our unique path on the journey back to union with all of Life. In times of such deep division, I find the International Pathwork Community an oasis of inclusion, tolerance, and rich celebration of differences. I have decided to feature the stories of various Pathworkers so that we might come together as a community to enrich each other through our shared experience. I hope you enjoy getting to know others in the International Pathwork Community through this online sharing! ************************ Cibele Salviatto Pathwork Helper in Miami, Florida Creating Sustainability From Within I started Pathwork exactly 20 years ago when I was 29. It would be much more accurate to say that Pathwork found me, indeed. And it found me as a career driven person, successfully working for a large corporation as a strategic planning manager, married with no kids and sensing that life should be more than making money and being perceived as successful. I needed to give back the gifts I had received from life, to contribute to something larger. I was first triggered by a colleague with whom I was able to have profound conversations. He never mentioned the word Pathwork, but I noticed that some...

Integrity. It’s not a word we use all that often when describing someone, and when we do it’s often associated with someone who is “good,” whatever our definition of “good” might be. So what does it really mean to be in Integrity? For me it means just to simply live my truth. Not just to tell my truth, but to live my truth. When we look around at everything that we think is wrong with this country, this society, and this world, it is easy to find fault and to preach what others “should” do, think, feel, or how they should act. But how willing are we to practice what we preach? When our thoughts, beliefs, and behavior are all in alignment, then we are living our truth, and the natural outcome will be a sense of integrity. Not pride or superiority, but a deep sense of “good enough” that is grounded in humility and serenity. In order to reach this place we have to take an honest look inside and find the places that are not in integrity, and don’t want to change. Am I steeped in judgment of another, and unwilling to look at how that character trait lives in me? Can I honestly acknowledge to myself and another when I have caused someone pain? Am I willing to examine my lifestyle choices, and make changes to habits and behaviors that are opposed to values I hold dear? If I strive to live a spiritual life, am I willing to face the ways in which I choose separation over surrender to the...

When we first begin our spiritual journey, we find we have wounded, dark corners of our psyche that we have long neglected, that need attention and healing and compassion. This is an essential step in strengthening the ego and reclaiming all of who we are, and the Pathwork teachings and practices are very effective at offering a sacred container for this healing to occur. In the Pathwork Lectures, we find profound truth that open our eyes to new possibilities for a life of joy and fulfillment. In walking this path with others in spiritual community we finally find the loving, nurturing environment we always longed for and deserved as a child. We are seen, heard, and acknowledged for who we truly are. All aspects of ourselves are welcomed. It often feels like water to a traveler in the desert, we have been parched and dehydrated for so long. It’s important to note, however, that the lower self can use this needed and valuable part of the process to keep us stuck there, to keep us in separation. Yes, the lower self can take a genuine part of our journey and make us think we are spiraling inward when we are just spinning endlessly in circles. We can spend the rest of our lives as wounded children that need healing, and never do the work of growing up. We may grow from an infant to an adolescent, but we refuse to launch into adulthood. The lower self is cunning and seductive, and it is important to be alert to its ways. The true inward spiral circles...

Have you ever had that moment of grace when you received a flash of insight not just in your mind, but in your heart and soul and every cell of your body? The kind that seemed more like a remembering than a discovering for the first time? A realization like this often shifts how you perceive life from that moment on. It can move you to the core of your being, and allow you to release stubborn behavior patterns and find peace and forgiveness. Profound truth, deep insight, and transformative healing are usually revealed in this way, because the mind has limitations that can’t fully grasp what is meant to be experienced. And that is why the great writers and poets have used metaphor and symbolism as a creative way to point to that which cannot be contained in words. The pictures they evoke bypass the brain and reach a different kind of intelligence, one that emerges from that spark of divinity that lives at the core of your being. The place in you that just knows. And has always known. The mind may have forgotten, but the Real Self never did. I love the beauty and power of these mystical messages to inform and guide us. And that’s why I’ve created an eight week online course entitled, “Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Your Journey Home to the Real Self” that explores the mystical symbolism in the classic story of The Wizard of Oz as seen through the lens of the Pathwork teachings. Because who ever said transformation had to be boring? I’m...

Imagine yourself wandering amidst a wild expanse of unchartered land when you come upon a small trickle of water making its way through a mostly dry river bed. It’s barely enough to wet your whistle, certainly not enough to sustain your life. Feeling dehydrated, you follow the trickle upstream until you come to a great wall. The trickle ends there. Or so it seems. An imaginative picture perhaps, but not so far off from the truth of most of us wandering the planet today. We see the wall, turn our backs to it, and look for others who might have abundant water to give us. The trouble is, those others are looking for water from us. And we all are dying of thirst. We don’t even consider that the wall is a dam, holding back an entire reservoir of life giving water. A small trickle gets through a crack in the wall, but that is all. Even if we knew what was on the other side, how would we release the water? The truth is, you are not only the wanderer desperately seeking water in an almost dry riverbed. You are the dam. And most importantly, you are the river itself. You have come to believe you are separate from the water, separate from life itself. Your thirst tells you you will die without this water. If only you knew this uncomfortable thirst was really Life calling you back to yourself. Calling you to release the water so that you can delight in a free flowing river, allowing it to carry you to the ocean...

Recently I attended an evening where Arun Gandhi, grandson of the great Mahatma Gandhi, was speaking as part of his “Live Your Life as Light” tour. It was an extremely inspiring evening, and I left reflecting on what it means to live your light. How can we live our light if we don’t know what our light is? This is the question that kept coming to me. Certainly before I began my spiritual journey, I was not even conscious of most of my darkness, let alone my light. I did feel the longing to find my purpose, but I hadn’t a clue what it was or how to find it. As a youth, Arun Gandhi experienced the injustices of apartheid South Africa, and found himself filled with anger. He learned from his grandfather that his anger had much to teach him, and that anger channeled constructively was a powerful force for good. Today Arun Gandhi is one of the most respected figures in the international peace movement. He had to walk through his darkness to reveal his light. His greatest gift to this world has been his darkness that he transformed. Why is it necessary to go through the darkness? Why can’t we just ignore it, bypass it, or transcend it on the way to peace and bliss? When we think we can ignore or deny a part of ourselves that we don’t view as desirable, it will always come out sideways. When we think we have to kill off a part of ourselves, we invite resistance. It’s the survival instinct, and it has...